Mixing Microphone into HDMI

[ddrueding]

I have a system that uses a standard receiver and HDMI to switch between sources, and amplify the speakers. The customer would like to add talk-over capability to one of the HDMI inputs. We already have XLR mics, but is there a box that can add additional audio to an HDMI stream without removing what was there to begin with?

 

[Howell]

You could mix the analog signals together before the HDMI.

 

[ddrueding]

The other HDMI source is a wireless HDMI bridge that I'm not in control of. My current thoughts are to strip the audio from the HDMI, mix it in the mixing board, and then send it via RCA into the receiver. Then program the receiver to play the audio from the RCA while playing the video from the HDMI. Likely to have sync issues, and I'm not even sure if the receiver can do that.

 

[Stereodude]

What you're asking for is very, very hard. It might be possible to cobble together something that can do it, but it would be very ugly.

My suggestion would be to mix the microphone in after the receiver. This would require a receiver with RCA or XLR pre-amp outputs, but my thought is that you could run the L&R or center pre-amp output into a basic mixer along with the microphone. That feeds a 2 channel or mono amp and goes to the speaker. This would let someone talk over a 5.1 or 7.1 system in the center or left & right channels. And the talking could be completely independent of the HDMI's volume.

 

[ddrueding]

What you're asking for is very, very hard. It might be possible to cobble together something that can do it, but it would be very ugly.

My suggestion would be to mix the microphone in after the receiver. This would require a receiver with RCA or XLR pre-amp outputs, but my thought is that you could run the L&R or center pre-amp output into a basic mixer along with the microphone. That feeds a 2 channel or mono amp and goes to the speaker. This would let someone talk over a 5.1 or 7.1 system in the center or left & right channels. And the talking could be completely independent of the HDMI's volume.

Yup, thanks for that. This has been a challenge since they added so many HDMI inputs that I had to go to a receiver over the old mixing board. Sounds like using the receiver as an HDMI switch with audio breakout then going back to the mixing board is a winner. Shame I can't pipe it back into the receiver for amplification.

 

[LunarMist]

Don't the krakaoke machines do that?

 

[ddrueding]

Nearly. From what I've seen, they don't mix the mic back into an HDMI stream. Instead they just play both directly.